Deprivation

"Mark -- we need to talk."

Oh shit, I thought. Here it comes.

"Um -- what about?" I replied, striving for nonchalance.

"Us."

I looked up from my dinner plate, regarding my wife's expression closely from across the table. I saw hesitation in her translucent blue eyes.

"Before you start, I need you to know something, Kat." I paused, speaking with my eyes. "I love you, sweetheart," I said aloud, trying to fan the dying embers of hope in my chest.

She didn't respond right away. I wondered if the din from the other patrons in the restaurant had masked my words.

"I know," she said. That's what makes this whole thing so difficult."

Fuck. A cold hand gripped my heart, threatening to rip it out of my chest.

**********

Ten months earlier...

"Not tonight, Mark. I have an early meeting in the morning. So I'll need you to get the kids off to school."

We had just settled into bed for the night. Kat's work in reinsurance meant she often had early calls and videoconferences with international clients in the insurance industry.

She deftly removed my hand from her shoulder, shutting down the neck massage that I had begun to give her. She pulled the sheet up around her chin.

I wasn't ready to give up so easily. "But Kat," I replied, rolling closer to her, "it's been three months since our last time. We didn't wait that long even after Isobel was born."

Isobel was our youngest, a feisty blue-eyed, blonde-haired kindergartener. She was her mother's miniature doppelganger. Her brother Dylan, older by two years less two days, shared my brown eyes and dark hair. Thankfully, he otherwise inherited most of his mother's wonderful facial features -- though in less feminine fashion.

"Giving birth is worse than major surgery on a woman's body," Kat answered. "Doctors everywhere recommend a minimum of six weeks of abstinence to allow time to recover. Add to that the fact that I did have major surgery with each of the kids -- you do the math..."

I rolled my eyes, not in mockery, but because she was chasing rabbits. I was talking about the norm, not about special circumstances. "I'm not disputing that. And I'm not trying to make you feel bad about waiting after the kids were born. It's just --"

Her nostrils flared. "You made it clear at the time that you felt deprived. You said that even if my body wasn't able to handle sex, that maybe I could consider other ways of helping you..."

"Ways of pleasing each other!" I interrupted, my voice rising. "Not just you helping me! And I waited a couple of months before daring to suggest that. I'm not a selfish prick."

"Some of us have self-control," she said icily. "Some of us -- don't."

My heart sank. I knew already that it was a losing battle -- again. Still, I needed to say my piece. I paused, trying to figure out a way not to sound accusatory.

"Some of us have different libidos than others," I said. "I get that. I know it bugs you that I'm 'always ready'..."

"It makes me feel like a piece of meat. Or, worse yet -- like a receptacle."

My anger quickly dissipated, replaced by something more empathetic. Not being the type of man who can completely suppress his feelings, I choked back tears, turning my head so as not to be seen.

"But it's not like that," I replied after composing myself. "Don't I always make it a point to bring you -- satisfaction?"

Kat snorted a bitter laugh. "That's part of the problem," she said. "Your undying insistence on always giving me an orgasm means we're always going at least 45 minutes from start to finish. Usually more. No wonder I'm exhausted the morning after! And sometimes I think you're going to suffocate down there by the time you bring me over the edge."

I was stunned. Going down on Kat wasn't just a chore to me. I loved the taste and feel of her pussy. But more importantly, I loved giving her orgasms. It wasn't enough for me to just get her wet enough for me to deliver my cock into her inner sanctum. The true rush was feeling her vaginal walls begin to gently pulse while I licked her labia and suckled her clit, first gently and then more frantically, working my fingers in and out of her moist channel. I was truly in awe of the way her lady parts worked together toward a crescendo, responding to the mystical conductor of my oral and digital ministrations. She always started off slowly, like a ship that had raised its anchor, but by the time she achieved release, she was a speedboat hurtling over the edge of the waterfall. The idea of a woman faking her orgasm was completely foreign to me. I made sure my woman's body told me its secrets. Giving her bliss had always made me feel like a superhero.

And now she was telling me it was -- too much?

"I -- I," I stammered, "I never realized."

"Paying attention isn't your strong suit. At least, paying non-sexual attention."

Communication wasn't my strong suit, either. I had no worthwhile response to that final volley. Her verbal cannonball decimated its intended target.

"Sorry," I said, kissing her on the forehead, feeling completely forelorn. And shut down.

"G'night, Mark," she answered. She rolled away from me and turned off the lamp, tightening the sheet around her like a cocoon.

I scooted back to my side of the bed. With the light out, I felt free to let the tears silently flow.

**********

In the months that followed, we settled into an unspoken agreement. I never initiated sex, thereby taking the "pressure" off Kat. All the power belonged to her. The problem -- to me -- was that Kat rarely initiated anything remotely intimate. And even when she did, it felt like she was driven by duty or guilt rather than by passion. I wanted her to want it. To want me.

About six months into our near-hiatus from sex, Kat started going out on Wednesday nights. Purportedly it was to attend a ladies' Bible study at the Presbyterian church in town. I had no reason to object -- or suspect -- since she always took the kids. Presumably the church had a decent child care setup, and Dylan and Isobel seemed none the worse for wear.

I used the extra time on Wednesday nights to try to ingratiate myself to my wife. Laundry, dishes, fix-it chores -- you name it. The way to thaw a woman's heart -- and panties -- might take a path through housework, and I was desperate to find it.

But one Wednesday night, I was simply feeling horny. Housework be damned! It had been another couple of months since our last tryst together, and I had MSB: "massive sperm build-up." I had studiously avoided masturbation in recent months, thinking that if my sperm production waited for Kat to be available, maybe my libido would slow to her level as well. Thus making her happy. Or at least making me less miserable.

But now I was at the point where I badly needed release. After all, isn't prostate cancer a potential by-product of far-too-infrequent ejaculation?

I went to our upstairs office and booted up the laptop. While it was oh-so-slowly making its way through its startup protocols, I walked down the hall to our master bathroom and pulled a hand towel out of the linen closet.

Returning to the office and shutting the door, I pulled my pants and boxer briefs down to my knees and sat down in the desk chair. The leather was cold on my butt cheeks, but the chill quickly passed. I spread the hand towel across my lap. Then I began to surf the net.

I had been aware of the YouPorn site for quite a while -- sort of a dirty version of YouTube. Lots of free porn, and much of it was pretty good quality. I also appreciated the fact that each video had user counts and user ratings, so I didn't waste my time on trash. Well, technically it was all trash, but I wanted quality trash.

Since I had been avoiding masturbation, I'd also been avoiding YouPorn for months. But I remembered there was a genre that I had really liked: real estate porn. Ostensibly the idea is that these beautiful but inexperienced female real estate agents are desperate to make their first sale, and they're willing to do just about anything (yes, you get it) to secure a contract. I searched for "real estate" and found a robust set of videos.

I scrolled through them and found one featuring a woman who looked a lot like Kat. If you're looking for it, find the one labelled "Southern MILF real estate agent gets cream pie" and you've hit the jackpot. As I watched, I found myself getting into it -- and getting extremely hard in my lower extremities. The film was shot in POV (Point of View) so that you never saw the male actor's face. You only saw his dick, legs and feet. The idea is to make it feel like you're the male in the film, and this is happening to you.

The woman conjured up mental images of Kat and took me back to some of the times we'd shared early in our marriage. The porn star's voice was nothing like Kat's, but I ignored the Southern drawl and focused on the smutty words of encouragement she was saying to her unseen POV lover. I could readily imagine Kat saying those things to me... though she never had.

The girl in the film was either a really good actress (yeah, right!) or she was truly enjoying riding the guy's cock. Her smile and tits were much like Kat's, though Kat never smiled during sex. The starlet, however, smiled a lot while her tits jiggled in syncopation with the beat of each reverse cowgirl gravity thrust -- up and down repeatedly on her lover's turgid tool. She was shaved bare in her nether region -- unlike Kat, who keeps a neatly trimmed bush. Or at least she did the last time that I had been allowed to see it. A couple of months seemed like decades.

My mind cast Kat's pubic hair onto the actress, and I could imagine my lovely wife's snatch gobbling up my prick as she shouted out the same sorts of encouragement as the actress: "Your dick feels so good in my pussy!" "I love the way it splits me!" "You're making me so wet!" "I want to feel you cum inside my pussy!"

My hand was working furiously on my fully tumescent rod, and my little sperm goblins were beginning to boil in my balls as they prepared to spew. The actress was absolutely loving her frenzied fucking. My brain was seeing Kat straddling me, riding my pole, shouting similar words of bliss and cheering me on to orgasm. And I imagined her loving the connection, both physical and emotional. As the male POV partner ejaculated into the actress' pussy with a massive cream pie, my penis spurted a volcanic eruption into the air and onto the towel laid across my lower torso. In my mind, Kat was shouting out the ecstasy of a mutual orgasm.

"Mark, did you put my purple blouse in the load with the --"

Wait. That doesn't sound like an orgasm, I thought.

The office door bounced back from the doorstop just as I turned the chair on its rollers. Kat was wide-eyed, staring down at the globs of semen spattered on the towel and on my right hand, which was still gripping my limp, naked dick as the last vestiges of cum oozed out of my urethra.

It took me a second or two to compose myself. I stood up, the leather from the chair sticking to my thighs like a nasty Band-Aid being ripped from an oozing cut. I quickly jerked my pants up to my waist, though my underwear were a tangled mess underneath. I tossed the towel under the desk, inadvertently draping it over the side of the waste basket.

"This -- this... isn't what it seems like," I started.

Kat raised her arm and hand in the universal sign to halt.

"I can see exactly what it is," Kat muttered in disappointment. "A total lack of self-control."

Talk about a knife to the gut. I had been fantasizing about my wife -- the woman I loved. The only person who could legitimately fuck me, and whom I could legitimately fuck, in a monogamous marital relationship. Not just fuck; the only person with whom I could legitimately experience the ultimate in intimacy together. But she was in control. And now she was criticizing me for having no control. Even though I had waited months to receive pleasure from her. Even though I was always 100% ready to give pleasure to her.

But I knew how it looked. Some sorry-assed on-line addict who prefers porn to his wife.

"I'm sorry, babe. I didn't mean to..." I said. I was at a loss for further words.

"Think about it, Mark!" she said loudly, then lowered her voice. "What if one of the kids had opened the door instead of me?"

"I guess I wasn't thinking. I guess -- "

"I guess you were thinking with your dick. As usual."

"That's not fair, Kat."

"Not fair? Look at you! All covered in cum. Looking at on-line porn. It's perverted. You disgust me!" she hissed.

"You don't understand..." I began.

"Understand? Oh, I understand. I understand that you're watching porn. I understand that you have a fixation on sex. And even after I told you that your unwavering libido makes me feel like a receptacle, I understand that you're jerking off in our bedroom to thoughts of some internet bimbo and using her as a receptacle in your mind!"

"Since when were you able to read minds?" I countered, "And when did you join the thought police?" I was beginning to feel a surge of anger at the injustice of it all.

"I don't have to read your mind to know what's going through it. You're objectifying women. Just like you objectify me."

She may as well have slapped me across the face. Objectify her? The woman I married? The mother of my two beautiful children? The woman I loved with all my heart? My life partner? The one I wanted to hold and cherish 24 hours a day? Where had I gone wrong?

Alas, communication was still not my forte. I rose and walked out, afraid I'd either lash out with words that I'd regret, or break down in tears that would humiliate me.

**********

The following Sunday morning, after three more nights with no sex, I decided to join my wife and kids on their weekly jaunt to church. I was miserable and didn't know where to turn. Maybe I should start looking upward instead of inward.

The songs were repetitive, and the sermon wasn't memorable. I wasn't sure it was worth the time and effort. But it seemed to please Kat and Dylan that I was sitting in the pew with them, so I was somewhat glad I had come. Isobel was downstairs in the kids' service. She had seemed happy enough when we dropped her off.

After the upstairs service had ended, Kat went downstairs with Dylan to fetch Isobel. I decided to go to the parking lot and bring the car up to the door. Pastor Rick -- a tall, heavyset man with kind eyes and a receding hairline -- blocked my exit. He extended his hand in greeting. I smiled and took it.

"Hello, Pastor," I said.

"Hello, Mark," he replied. "Long time, no see."

Couldn't resist the jab, I thought.

"Yeah, well, life's been busy."

"We missed you." This time, I instead detected a note of genuine sincerity -- nothing saccharine or scolding about it.

"Thanks, Pastor."

"So... life's been busy?" He seemed to be fishing.

"Well, you know how it is with a young family..."

"Absolutely. Mine are grown now, but I remember how it was."

"Yeah, not enough hours in the day."

"But you're making time for the important things?" He was fishing again, but not in a creepy stalker sort of way.

"You mean -- like Bible study, and prayer, and things like that?"

He smiled a toothy grin.

"I'm not checking up on your spiritual temperature," he said. "Though that's important. But the basics need to be met first. Unmet physical and emotional needs can get in the way of spiritual development. Sort of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I find that young families often struggle with sleep deprivation, or deprivation of other sorts. It can interfere with relational health."

Boy, did he hit the nail on the head, I thought. Unhealthy relations. Deprivation.

Kat was no mind reader, but apparently Pastor Rick was. He seemed to be looking straight into my soul. I was certain he could read the pain etched in my eyes.

I couldn't handle it. I dropped my gaze to the floor.

"Um, Pastor, I need to go get the car. Thanks for the chat."

"Any time, Mark. Any time, my friend."

He moved aside, patting me on the shoulder with an undertone of compassion, and let me pass to the parking lot.

**********

I couldn't bear to return to church over the next couple of Sundays. Pastor Rick might launch another fishing expedition. And I probably couldn't fend off his extra-sensory powers. Kat and the kids, however, continued their Wednesday night and Sunday morning patterns. I stayed home but studiously avoided porn sites and masturbation sessions.

Still, my body -- and heart -- seemed to crave intimacy. For the first time since we'd been married, I started having wet dreams. They were always about Kat. I hurriedly and covertly washed the sheets each time it happened, not wanting to incur Kat's disdain at my perversion and lack of self-control. But still -- how's a guy supposed to control his dreams? Nonetheless, in my heart of hearts, I knew Kat would view nocturnal emissions as a visible symbol of my perversion and fixation.

One particular morning -- a Wednesday -- the dream seemed so real that I was confused when I awoke. Kat was staring at me from the other side of the bed when I opened my crust-laden eyes.

"What was that?" she asked.

"What was -- what?"

"You were shouting 'Cum for me, baby! Cum for me!'"

"I was?"

"Yes, you were. And then you thrashed around with such a violent spasm, it was like you were having an... an..."

She ripped the covers back from my body. The guilty splooge had soaked through my boxer briefs and pooled on the sheets, leaving a dark spot that was unmistakable.

Kat was silent for a moment, then cleared her throat.

"Mark, are you -- are you having an affair?"

What the hell? I thought.

"What? Of course not!" I said. "What on earth would ever give you an idea like that?"

"Your fixation on sex. You're not getting it at home, so you must be getting it... somewhere. I -- I'm thinking that maybe porn isn't enough. And when I hear you begging your lover to cum for you when you dream, it sounds like something more than porn-watching is going on..."

"Well, you're right about one thing, and one thing only, Kat. Porn is not enough. But that does not mean I'd ever cheat on you. When I watch porn, I'm thinking about you! I don't even dream about anyone but you! 'Til death do us part. Or until... you leave me..."

She hesitated, lost in thought. "So when you yelled out in your sleep -- it was to me?" she asked.

"Of course!"

"I don't remember you ever begging me to cum for you..."

"Maybe not. Maybe I don't think you'd like for me to do that. But that doesn't mean I don't crave it."

"Your cravings again. Maybe you should have an affair..." She trailed off and turned away.

That was the first time it hit me. Why didn't she reassure me that she wasn't leaving me? Why did she instead tell me that maybe I should have an affair? Was her ability to go months on end with no sex an indicator of something more sinister?